Gordon Campbell on govt’s latest handout to agri-business

Gordon Campbell on the government’s latest
handout to agri-business

Given the bumper
earnings from commodity prices, you might think
agriculture would be the last sector in need of a government
handout – but no, at yesterday’s post Cabinet press
conference, John Key, Nick Smith and David Carter unveiled a
series of irrigation scheme handouts for farmers and
agribusiness. This largesse will include a $35 million
“accelerated investment” fund over the next five years,
rising to a possible $400 million fund for irrigation scheme
investment by the government where taxpayers would be
excluded – but of course ! – from owning or accessing
the commercial benefits from the investment they will have
so generously seeded.

Talk about picking winners,
corporate welfare etc etc. (Not a peep from the Act Party
and its new leader so far on this violation of their core
principles.) As for National, these irrigation funds are but
the latest is in a grand old tradition of handouts and
subsidies for farmers stretching back to the SMPs of the
Muldoon era. Over at The Standard, the latest moves
are being placed in the context of China’s wider long term interests
in gaining a controlling stake in New Zealand natural
resources.

Yesterday, Nick Smith was at pains to put the
irrigation plans – and the inevitable intensification of
NZ farming practices and land use that they herald – in
the context of a related ‘contestable’ freshwater
cleanup fund, and enhanced standards for water purity and
minimal flows. Because, as Smith conceded, “unless we do
it right, it [farming intensification] can lead to
environmental degradation.”

You bet. The trouble is, as
Greens Co-Leader Russel Norman quickly pointed out, Smith has actually
gutted the process for clean water standards proposed in the
draft National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management
(NPS)

Nick Smith has removed the provision
from the draft NPS which requires a resource consent, as a
discretionary activity, for land use intensification. This
is despite the fact that nearly every report on water
quality identifies land use intensification as the main
cause of water quality decline in New Zealand," Dr Norman
said.

For example, a 2010 article by the National
Institute on Water and Atmosphere says that our declining
river water quality is undoubtedly associated with the
intensification of pastoral farming and the conversion of
drystock farmland to dairy farming, particularly in Waikato,
Southland, and Canterbury. "Despite the evidence, Nick Smith
has taken out provisions that will force regional councils
to regulate land use intensification," said Dr
Norman.

"The Government has not only disregarded
the recommendations of the [expert] Board of Inquiry, it has
also disregarded the recommendations of the Land and Water
Forum which comprises 58 diverse stakeholder groups. The
Forum recommended that the draft NPS be adopted quickly, and
with only minor changes, that would not undermine its
strength. "What constituency is the Government serving by
undermining their own experts and stakeholders and pulling
the teeth from the NPS?

Why, agribusiness
of course.

***

The Decider,
and the Writer Down

Years ago, in his famous
speech to the White House correspondents dinner satirist
Stephen Colbert defined the relationship between government
and journalism. Those in power decide: and the media simply
writes it down. That’s how it works. Journalism is the art
of transcribing the words of the powerful. This morning’s
Herald editorial provides a telling example of the art of
transcription.

At yesterday’s post Cabinet press
conference, the Prime Minister had sought to deflect
criticism of his $275,000 refurbishment of Premier House –
this, at a time when budgets for services to the public are
either are being frozen or scaled back. Key argued that (a)
it was “hardly lavish” to maintain an asset that
hadn’t been repainted in eleven years and (b) such trifles
were to be taken as a sign that Labour couldn’t make
headway on more important issues : “Labour knows that
unemployment was falling, cancer waiting lists are falling,
crime rates are falling, We created 30,000 jobs in the first
quarter of this year. Labour doesn’t want to talk about
interest rates being at an all time low....”

Blimey. So
everything is going swimmingly. Who knew? Apparently, only
the small-minded and envious feel bothered by evidence that
our leaders are not deferring their own comforts, or
practicing the thrift they argue is so essential for the
rest of us. The Herald’s editorialist agrees
wholeheartedly: “Labour seems to think the public
begrudges John Key the usual trappings of office.” Of
course they don’t ! Under the headline “Labour energy
better directed to the Budget” the newspaper channels
Key’s “let them eat cake’ sentiments into print:

Premier House in Wellington, where Prime
Ministers can live and entertain, is being repainted and
recarpeted at a cost of $275,000. Mr Key says it had not
been repainted for 11 years. He says he is happy to accept
any scrutiny he is put under but wonders why Labour is
raising such trivial issues. He is not alone…..Against a
Prime Minister whose popularity is on the wane, this sort of
pitch might work….. It is only likely to rebound on the
Opposition, showing it to be miserable, mean-spirited and
out of tune with the country's
mood.

Oddly enough, the Herald’s
own – albeit unscientific – online readers’ poll
shows respondents as being almost equally divided about the
merits of the Premier House
revamp.

***

Fast Food
Employment Hell

The welfare reforms that the
government has signalled as a second term priority will have
the effect of forcing beneficiaries into accepting virtually
any “reasonable” job offer that comes their way. For a
salutary glimpse into just how hellish some of those jobs
can be, I heartily recommend this brilliantly written US
Business Week article into the production line work practices
at such fast food industry outlets as Taco Bell.

For
starters, the language used onsite is pretty instructive.
Workers are called Food Champions or Service Champions,
subdivided into Steamers, Stuffers and Expeditors. Every
word they utter, every hand movement they make, every
folding action and footstep between counter and grill has
been scripted and measured to serve the 164 second target
between when the car arrives at the ordering station and
when it pulls away from the pick-up window. For
example:

The back of the restaurant has
been engineered so that the Steamers, Stuffers, and
Expeditors…take as few footsteps as possible during a
shift. There are three prep areas: the hot holding area, the
cold holding area, and the wrapping expediting area. The
Stuffer in the hot holding area stuffs the meat into the
tortillas, ladling beef with Taco Bell's proprietary tool,
the BPT, or beef portioning tool. The steps for scooping the
beef have been broken down into another acronym, SST, for
stir, scoop, and tap. Flour tortillas must be cooked on one
side for 15 seconds and the other for five…. The
real challenge is the wrapping. Taco Bell once had 13
different wrappers for its products. That has been cut to
six by labeling the corners of each wrapper differently. The
paper, designed to slide off a stack in single sheets, has
to be angled with the name of the item being made at the
upper corner. The tortilla is placed in the middle of the
paper and the item assembled from there until you fold the
whole thing up in the wrapping expediting area next to the
grill. The best Food Champions can prepare about 100
burritos, tacos, chalupas, and gorditas in less than half an
hour, and they have the 78-item menu
memorized.

Speed and accuracy are the
catchwords for an industry expected to do $168 billion in
sales for 2011, with about 70 percent of that coming in
through the drive-thru windows.

Above me
on the wall, a flat-screen display shows the average time of
the last five cars at either the order station or the
pick-up window, depending on which is slowest. If the number
is red, as it is now, that means one, or both, of the waits
is exceeding 50 seconds, the target during peak periods. It
now shows 53 seconds, on its way to 60, 70 ... and then I
stop looking. The high-pitched ding that announces each new
customer becomes steady, unrelenting, and dispiriting—85
cars will roll through over the peak lunch rush. And I keep
blowing the order script.

It's as if the great
advances of human civilization, in everything from animal
husbandry to mathematics to architecture to manufacturing to
information technology, have all crescendoed with the
Crunchwrap Supreme, delivered via the pick-up
window.

For the skill and sweat needed to
survive in this modern slave galley, the hourly pay is just
above the minimum wage.

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